Tag Archives: Archaeology South-East

As part of the 25th anniversary of the Council for British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology we hosted an event at Worthing Museum to help visitors discover first-hand the objects and clues archaeologists use to find out about the First World War.

Our expert archaeologists Justin Russell from Archaeology South-East and Luke Barber from the Sussex Archaeological Society, who had provided training for project students and volunteers, were on hand to share their amazing collections. They brought objects from the British, German and French armies that they had collected and in some cases dug up on the Front Lines in France.

Highlights of the collections included:

Some scary shell fragments from the Front Lines,

A practice grenade like those used by Shoreham Army Camp recruits in training,

A pocket camera carried by a soldier,

And a Lee Enfield rifle that was issued to British soldiers,

Also on display were objects uncovered as part of our two metal-detecting training sessions and one mini-excavation on the site of Shoreham Army Camp with Worthing College students and volunteers.

The day also featured the chance for our visitors to do some metal-detecting in a mini astro-turf field.

Many thanks to Luke Barber and Justin Russell for their time and sharing their amazing collections with us.

28th March: Garden Investigation
With the generous permission of one of our volunteers we ventured once again into exploring what evidence, if any, of the Camp remains beneath the houses and hills of Shoreham.

Justin Russell from Archaeology South-East and Luke Barber from the Sussex Archaeological Society provided some training for our older volunteers in the techniques of metal-detecting and excavating a small test pit in our volunteer’s garden.

Justin used 1916 and modern maps along-side aerial photographs to match up where the garden lay in relation to the where the Camp used to be. This revealed 4 barrack blocks crossing the area; one was now under a modern road, another under the conservatory, one lay across the centre of the lawn and the fourth lay at the very bottom edge of the garden.

We marked out where one barrack block would have crossed the lawn with string. Luke then taught the volunteers the basics of using a metal detector. Given the restricted size and disturbed nature of the ground we treated the whole area as our sample and with respect for the lawn we only searched for non-ferrous material (non-iron) like brass.

Volunteer extracting object found with metal detector.

At the bottom of the garden we excavated a small section of the deep-beds. Our hope was to locate a path or drainage associated with the barrack block at the bottom of the garden. However, whilst we discovered plenty of construction materials such as nails and glass we did not find any features.

Despite the horrendous weather the volunteers soldiered on and we would like to thank them for their hard work and Justin and Luke for their expertise and support.

May: The Results are inWe have just recently received a full report, kindly produced by Justin Russell, on the objects we uncovered back in March.

In addition to more modern discoveries and even some World War Two materials, a number of the objects were identified as likely from the First World War Camp. These included construction materials such as nails and glass along-side items from everyday life like ceramic crockery and part of a fountain pen. There was even an eyelet from a ground sheet which may well have come from the early tents at the Camp.

Our volunteer whose garden we explored found a very interesting object in the weeks after our excavation; a .303 bullet. Justin explains the bullet shows no signs of having been fired and its unusual, diameter, blunt tip and lack of cannelure

(the groove around the cylinder of the bullet, to secure it in the cartridge) suggest it was a training/drill round probably of late First World War date.